Retransmission of data to or from a mobile station, MS, or User Equipment, UE, is previously known. It is also known to allocate channel resources in a system using rate switching or channel switching.
Within this patent application, a radio network controller, RNC, is understood as a network element including an RRM (Radio Resource Management) entity. The RNC is connected to a fixed network. Node B is a logical node responsible for radio transmission/reception in one or more cells to/from a User Equipment. A base station, BS, is a physical entity representing Node B. A server device provides information accessible to other devices over a communications network such as, e.g., the Internet. A client device is a device having access to information provided by one or more devices over a communications network.
With reference to FIG. 1, base stations BS 1>> and BS 2 are physical entities representing Nodes B Node B 1 and Node B 2 respectively. Node B 1 and Node B 2 terminate the air interface, called Uu interface within UMTS, between UE and respective Node B towards the radio network controller RNC. RNC is connected to a fixed network Network. The fixed network may comprise one or more Server Devices Server Device.
Medium access control, MAC, and radio link control, RLC, is used within radio communications systems like General Packet Radio Services, GPRS, and UMTS.
Transport protocols, such as TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), are used widely for “reliable” packet data communications, where reliability refers to its ability to handle retransmissions of data packets that are, lost during transmissions and to control transmission rate based on link quality in terms of packet loss and delay characteristics. There are also protocols, such as UDP (Users Datagram Protocol), considered “unreliable” in the sense that they do not themselves inherit retransmissions.
Transport protocol packets carry packets according to application-level protocols such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
International Patent Application WO9965219 discloses a TCP/IP/PPP modem including an HTML packet sniffer. The HTML packet sniffer interprets the packet header to determine if the data content contains valid HTML data. If so, an HTML rating decoder begins to parse the HTML data for rating tags. An HTTP response parser interprets an HTTP header.
The Internet Society: Request for Comments (RFC) No. 2616, June 1999 describes Hypertext Transfer Protocol 1.1 (HTTP 1.1). Sections 4.4 and 14.13 describe determination of message length.
The Internet Society: Request for Comments (RFC) No. 3135, June 2001 describes proxy solutions for some explicitly mentioned systems, including systems operating with TCP for communication links being subject to small bandwidth-delay products, such as W-LANs (Wireless Local Area Networks), W-WANs (Wireless Wide Area Networks) and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) or links optimized with small block error rates (BLER), such as satellite links.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,673,322 describes a split proxy system that encapsulates TCP/IP transmissions into a script transmission.
European Patent Application EP1109359 describes an apparatus and method for dividing a TCP connection into two connections, having congestion control in only one of the two connections.
3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP): Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network, Radio Interface Protocol Architecture, 3GPP TS 25.301 v3.6.0, France, September 2000, describes an overall protocol structure of a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). There are three protocol layers:
physical layer, layer 1 or L1,
data link layer, layer 2 or L2, and
network layer, layer 3 or L3.
Layer 2, L2, and layer 3, L3 are divided into Control and User Planes. Layer 2 consists of two sub-layers, RLC and MAC, for the Control Plane and four sub-layers, BMC, PDCP, RLC and MAC, for the User Plane. The acronyms BMC, PDCP, RLC and MAC denote Broadcast/Multicast Control, Packet Data Convergence Protocol, Radio Link Control and Medium Access Control respectively.
FIG. 2 displays a simplified UMTS layers 1 and 2 protocol structure for a Uu Stratum, UuS, or Radio Stratum, between a User Equipment UE and a Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, UTRAN.
Radio Access Bearers, RABs, are associated with the application for transportation of services between core network, CN, and User Equipment, UE, through a radio access network. Each RAB is associated with quality attributes such as service class, guaranteed bit rate, transfer delay, residual BER, and traffic handling priority. An RAB may be assigned one or more Radio Bearers, RBs, being responsible for the transportation between UTRAN and UE. For each mobile station there may be one or several RBs representing a radio link comprising one or more channels between UE and UTRAN. Data flows (in the form of segments) of the RBs are passed to respective Radio Link Control, RLC, entities which amongst other tasks buffer the received data segments. There is one RLC entity for each RB. In the RLC layer, RBs are mapped onto respective logical channels. A Medium Access Control, MAC, entity receives data transmitted in the logical channels and further maps logical channels onto a set of transport channels. In accordance with subsection 5.3.1.2 of the 3GPP technical specification MAC should support service multiplexing e.g. for RLC services to be mapped on the same transport channel. In this case identification of multiplexing is contained in the MAC protocol control information.
Transport channels are finally mapped to a single physical channel which has a total bandwidth allocated to it by the network. In frequency division duplex mode, a physical channel is defined by code, frequency and, in the uplink, relative phase (I/Q). In time division duplex mode a physical channel is defined by code, frequency, and timeslot. As further described in subsection 5.2.2 of the 3GPP technical specification the L1 layer is responsible for error detection on transport channels and indication to higher layer, FEC encoding/decoding and interleaving/deinterleaving of transport channels.
PDCP provides mapping between Network PDUs (Protocol Data Units) of a network protocol, e.g. the Internet protocol, to an RLC entity. PDCP compresses and decompresses redundant Network PDU control information (header compression and decompression).
None of the cited documents above offers a method and system of retrieving channel resource requirements in systems using channel resource management, involving rate switching or channel switching, allowing for identical or same-type transport or application-level protocols for fixed and switched rates/channels. Nor do they provide an interface to channel resource management.